Last night, Channel 4 aired it's documentary going behind the scenes of the female masking phenomena. As a member of that community, and as one of only a few females within it, here is my quick review from what I saw in the show and how people reacted in the media...

Having been masking for around 10 years now, this documentary still managed to show me areas of this world that I didn't know about. As it said, maskers are quite private people and although we talk on Dollspride and MaskChat, it was still insightful to see 'behind the scenes' with a peek into the lives of a few individuals that were taking big steps in their personal lives regarding their masking.

The documentary was decently made I thought... it didn't poke fun, it wasn't biased in any way, it didn't have any kind of snarky commentary overlain or sarcastic editing. It did exactly what a documentary should do, which is document the events.

However, it wasn't very investigative and as I watched the hashtag#livingdollspopulate Twitter it became clear that maybe the documentary had jumped in at the deep end too quickly as people freaked out at Sherry's own hair being used to make the Femskin vagina look more natural.

On Channel 4 now, the most absolutely bloody terrifying thing you'll see all year. #livingdolls

Newspaper reviews of the documentary today from the Independent and Telegraph both agree that the show didn't go deep enough. Luke Malone (producer of the show) if you're reading this... the show was watched by 2.3m people, you need to do a follow-up of "Return Of The Living Dolls" ;-)

Comparisons to horror movie villains like Michael Myers from Halloween and Buffalo Bill from Silence Of The Lambs came quick and often thereafter unfortunately as people struggled to understand our fetish and how it's just a preference like any other fetish - bondage, feet, gas masks, genital piercing, asphyxiation, domination etc.. The only people that 'got it' were other women...

p.s. #livingdolls scared me a bit but... each to their own (personally if my boyfriend did it, though, it'd be a deal breaker) #justsaying

Overall therefore I think the documentary was insightful, but to the world at large it will be seen as a freakshow. All I can hope is that it helped some people... those people that have been masking in private for years alone and didn't realise there was a whole community out there with a similar interest, or people like myself that have never gone out in public whilst masked before and feel a little more confident to do so now.

As another 10 year female veteran I too was disappointed that only men were featured. I think the reason for this is that the programme's tagline was "it's all about men becoming women" and we just don't fit into this mold! It's still transformational, but not in quite the same way. I was initially worried that it might put off other women, but reading the tweets above I'm not sure now. The fact is if you were curious from the show and started looking on YT, Googling etc they would come across you, me, Antonia, Jasmine, Mia and the others quite quickly.